The Casting at Vetements Included Russia’s Coolest Streetwear Designer

A designer walking another designer’s show? That’s what we’d call a very creative casting call, and it happened today on the Vetements runway in Paris. Dressed in a reworked DHL tee, cropped leather trousers, a black short-sleeved button-up, and a pair of chunky boots, the opening model was none other than Russian streetwear wunderkind designer Gosha Rubchinskiy.

Rubchinskiy, who hails from Moscow, is known for his nostalgic post-Soviet riffs on the Russian free market of the ’90s. His introduction of sweatshirts with Tommy Hilfiger–type logos captioned with Cyrillic script and throwback high-waisted denim jeans fastened with shoelaces have made him a cult favorite on the country’s underground fashion scene—and a fitting poster child for the deconstructed, plucked-from-the-bazaar look of Vetements clothes.

And it only makes sense that he be part of the extended Vetements family, given that Demna Gvasalia, one of the designers in the Parisian fashion collective, is from ex-Soviet Georgia. As it happens, Rubchinskiy’s friend Lotta Volkova Adam, a native of Vladivostok, Russia, and a stylist for the label, closed the show in a floor-sweeping coat, leather cuissardes, and a thigh-grazing mini denim skirt—a very exciting new union of cool kids, indeed.